He was one of most intriguing personalities that have ever appeared at the Olympiads. Originating from today's Pakistan (born in 1905) he went to Europe in 1929 brought by his master, Sir Umar Hayat Khan, and came back to Asia just four years later. He spent rest of his life in his homeland, away of any public chess activities. He received a small patrimony after his master's death which let him farm happily for the rest of his life in Punjab. He died in 1966.

Despite of his exotic looks and suits, with a funny, bulged turban over his head, he was a player of ultimate strength although he used to play Indian version of chess before he came to Europe (thee differences are minor but still important at top level). Whether his master took him to Europe because of his unique chess talent which he was apparently aware of and whether Sultan Khan was a slave of a maharaja or just a servant is not clear. Reuben Fine reported once that he came to a dinner to Sultan Khan master's house and was embarrassed to see the Indian grandmaster serving him the dishes, yet the validity of the story has been questioned many times.

Sultan Khan achieved outstanding successes during his short stay in Europe. He played at top British board at 1930, 1931 and 1933 Olympiads. He never did worse than 50% leading Great Britain to decent top 10 places. He won British Chess Championship three times (1929, 1932, 1933) missing the title only once, in 1931. He beat dr Savielly Tartakower in a friendly match and defeated a. e. Alekhine and Capablanca in a single game. He won shared 3rd place in Hastings 1932/33 behind Flohr and Pirc. His Chessmetrics ratings had been close to 2600 making him world top 20 member at the time and very close to top 10 standards. He is unofficially recognized as first Asian grandmaster.

These are two of his most famous games:
Sultan Khan-Capablanca 1-0, Hastings 1930
Sultan Khan-Flohr 1-0, Prague olm 1931

Besides Dresden there are 2 other candidates for the organisation of the Olympiad 2008: Tallinn/Estonia and Yerevan/Armenia. The decision shall be taken at the end of October 2004.

P.S. The news about Yerevan sign up has proven false. Thus only Berlin and Tallinn left at the field.

Thirty-four years have passed since Germany hosted the Chess Olympiad (Siegen 1970). Now they plan to become the first nation in the history to have held six Olympic events. The bid for year 2008 is Dresden. So far they have no opposition and the deadline for 2008 applications is April 15th, 2004. Below you will find their homepage, the only problem is that they did not translate it from German to English.

http://www.schachbund.de/chess_oly/

OlimpBase has been designed to bring complete data for all the Chess Olympiads played in the history. As you must have noticed so far only 1927-1974 period has been done. The rest is missing. We want to be ready for October 14th, the Calvia take off. We are growing dynamically, but we are still missing some data. We are working on Haifa 1976 and Malta 1980 now. Please contact us in case you could help with other Olympiads:

- For 1976-1994 period - player's titles (GM, IM, FM) and ELOs,
- Haifa 1976 - title corrections,
- Buenos Aires 1978 - team rosters, round-by-round team pairings,
- Lucern 1982, Thessaloniki 1984, Dubai 1986, Thessaloniki 1988, Novi Sad 1990, Manila 1992, Moscow 1994 - team rosters, round-by-round pairings, board-by-board pairings, complete game files.
- ... and miscellanea - articles, photos, reports, extra statistics, trivia and whatever you think maybe of value for thousands of our readers.

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This is our new series devoted to those, who did not earn worldwide credit adequate to their chess skills and Olympic achievements. One of them is certainly Isaac Kashdan (born 1905), relatively unknown US player. In fact he was one of strongest players of the world in early 30's. Even Alekhine mentioned one day that Kashdan might be next World Champion. He earned well-deserved nickname of "the little Capablanca" because of his unique ability to extract victories from seemingly even positions. Unfortunately Kashdan could not engage seriously into chess career. He turned to earn a living as an insurance agent and administrator in order to support his family.

His Olympic record is ultimate and unique. He participated in 1928, 1930, 1931, 1933 and 1937. He won three gold and one silver medal with US team. He won as much as 52 games overall and lost only 5, one at each Olympiad, two of them in the last round (vs Rubinstein in 1931 and vs Flohr in 1933). He never scored worse than 70% winning two gold individual medals, one silver, one bronze, and one fourth place overall. In Stockholm, 1937 he scored 14/16, the best individual record of all the players. His all-time Olympic record of 79.7% is unique achievement superior to vast majority of chess giants.

He had many serious achievements in non-Olympic tournaments as well. In 1930 he won 1st prizes in Berlin, Stockholm and Gyor. He was 2nd, right behind Capablanca in New York, 1931 and tied for 4th in Bled on the same year. In 1932 he tied 2nd behind Alekhine in Pasadena, tied 1st prize with Alekhine at Mexico City and tied 2nd to Flohr at Hastings. He tied for 1st place in US Championship in 1942 but lost play-off vs Reshevsky.

After the War Kashdan maintained his ties to chess by organizing and directing tournaments, and editing the chess column for the prestigious Los Angeles Times from 1955 until 1982. He was also the co-founder of Chess Review. In 1950 he was awarded the IM title, in 1954 he got the GM title and the IA title in 1960. He passed away at the age of 79 in 1985.

Few have contributed more to the development of the chess life in USA than GM Isaac Kashdan.

This is one of his best and most famous games being a vivid proof for his profound knowledge of the endings. For the above, he was given a special prize for the best ending:

Kashdan - Flohr, Hamburg 1930

Now it is time for some relax. Check your chess skills and Olympic history knowledge. Perhaps in the future we shall develop our quiz section with more sophisticated tests but today we start with very simple question. The picture on the left illustrates one of most famous, classical Olympic games. Here is full game notation.

Your task is to tell us who commanded White pieces and who played with Black. After no less than 24 hours the correct answer shall be given here. The first person to send correct answer to us (please use the menu bar icon for e-mail) shall be proclaimed The Winner. Sorry, no money, just pride!

The answer is of course Tal-Hecht, Varna 1962. Tal did not move his Queen back and went on for a dazzling win after couple of moves. Our today's winner is Pierre Bourget, a well-know Canadian Olympic expert.

We are pleased to inform the readers, that thanks to Mr. Geoffrey Borg, the President of the Maltese Chess Federation we have expanded Folkestone 1933 Olympiad database by almost 30 games, mainly played by Scottish players. The server has already been updated. Our thanks goes to Malta, and we are looking for more. We are missing yet as much as 4,644 games overall!

We are proud to announce that OlimpBase has become a source of information on the Chess Olympiads' history at 36th Chess Olympiad's Official WWW Site.

http://www.36chessolympiad.com

This is tremendous incentive for us to be ready with all the 35 Olympiads until 14th October. Judging by your broad response to our queries it should be no problem. Thanks all!